dreamscometruegirl
by andthenshesaid
Summary: Maybe he can picture a little girl with his eyes and her hair running around the house, but he can picture a little girl with his eyes and her hair getting her throat slit in the games just as easily. AnniexFinnick.


_you have to come back_, she says and he nods and chokes and tries his hardest not cry. she just keeps giving him that same hopeful, earnest look and it's killing him, it really is.

.

they dance on her victory tour, _just one dance_, she says and he puts her hand on his hip and his other on her shoulder and she smiles, a little bit slowly, and he thinks this is the happiest she's looked since before the games.

.

because he's finnick odair and she's annie cresta and this type of thing doesn't happen to victors.

victors don't do families, victors don't get attached, victors sure as hell don't fall in love.

.

he thinks about her laugh during the parade. he thinks about the way she'd get that determined look on her face during training. he thinks about her smile while he's talking to johanna. he thinks about her screams in his nightmares. he thinks about her, god, he thinks about her every second and of every day and it makes all the sugar cubes he eats taste so damn bitter.

.

he doesn't want to be reaped.

because there this big, very big, part of his brain that just wants to stay with annie, stay with annie and spend the rest of his life here, living sort-of happily ever after, because maybe he can picture a little girl with his eyes and her hair running around the house.

but then there's the rebellion, and there's the reason annie cries at night, and there are the thousands of emancipated children out there.

and the small, very small, part of his brain that isn't selfish wins out.

.

he can picture that little girl with his eyes and her hair getting her brains bashed out with a mace, too.

.

and then there are the interviews and he goes up and charms the crowd and wonders if she's watching or curling up in her room and trying not to think about him, when he gave up not thinking about her ages ago.

and then there are the interviews where the girl on fire is on fire once again and where the boy on fire shocks him to the core.

because, hello, aren't they 16, and then there's just that word, rattling around in his head along with thoughts of his annie.

_baby._

.

katniss doesn't look it.

she shoots arrows like no one's business, and her hair is always in that tight braid, and she doesn't seem to care.

it's not til later, later when he wants to hit himself, that he slowly realizes someone here is lying.

.

finnick dreams of blood and lakes made of tears and screaming and when he wakes up her name is on his lips.

.

she's curled in his bed, like she always is, wearing a pair of his sweats rolled up to her ankles and biting her nails. he could tell her to stop, because they're already down to the quick, but he doesn't.

she's talking and he's trying to listen but it's all buzz in his head.

he tries to focus on anything else, like the way there's a pillow on the floor that's shaped like a shell or the way the collection of fishhooks mags had given him are crooked on the shelf, but it all comes back to her because she threw the pillow down and she's probably the one who was messing with the fishhooks and it always comes back to her.

_baby. _

.

she was wearing a dress, that swirled from sea-foam green to sparkling white to navy to black as pitch and she looked beautiful.

but it gave her nightmares.

.

mags would have guessed, because it's mags and he only realizes later that annie looks like it, but he just told himself it was annie being annie, the crazy girl from district 4.

just because she's crying more, well annie always crys and the games are coming up, just because she stays in bed longer and eats too much and is in the bathroom for far too long trying to drown on the sound of retching with the water, well it's annie and the games are coming up.

finnick odair, in that moment, realizes he is one of the stupidest people in all of panem.

.

peeta's possible the best person finnick's ever met, and it makes him sick.

he's too good of a liar to be that good.

.

because _once upon a time there was a hero and crazy girl _isn't a good love story, and throwing in a baby would only make it worse.

.

for some brief moment his brain tricks himself into thinking katniss is annie.

it's the games, it's the insanity that trails behind katniss, it's the fucking baby, but he thinks it and it hurts, because annie isn't there.

.

johanna tells him _it'll all be okay, finn, we'll get out of this_ but she sounds about as sure as he was when he told annie he would come back, and he honestly doesn't think johanna cares if she lives or dies, because johanna has no one, and makes reckless moves and tries to torture herself, and he's pretty sure her only goal in life _or death_ is to go off with a bang.

.

finnick dreams of things swimming up from under the water and eating her feet as she floats helplessly and tiny baby sweaters going up in flames and when he wakes up he's crying.

.

he hears her screaming and he can't think, he just needs to get to her, because it's annie and ninety-nine percent of his brain is occupied by the fact that annie is in pain.

but then theres the other tiny, sick one percent of his brain that is excited because it means annie is with him, close to him, and he would give a_nything_ for that.

he hates himself for that one percent.

.

as he sits in the hovercraft, begging and pleading for some way to get to _her_, he briefly wonders if there's a bump yet.

and then he thinks of the capitol and what they would do if they discovered that one, tiny bump, and it all makes him too sick to his stomach and he feels one raging flash of hate for all the people on this plane who are keeping him from her.

.

and then one night he wakes up and she's next to him, and he's not sure how it happened, but it's good and he puts a hand on her hip, spanning to her belly.

.

finnick dreams of sunshine and the way a fishing boat glides through water and laughter and when he wakes up, she's next to him.

.


End file.
